


The Nightingale Chronicles #5: Enchant

by Losille



Series: The Nightingale Chronicles [5]
Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Dinner, Christmas Eve, F/M, Gen, Scotland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 15:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5380400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Losille/pseuds/Losille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While spending Christmas in Scotland with his family, Tom invites a complete stranger to spend the holiday with them.</p><p>Prompt #5/100: Tom and Mena meet for dinner, and Tom gets a surprise.</p><p>***This is a part of a 100 prompt drabble challenge. Each update will be published as its own oneshot, though several of them will be written together for story arcs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightingale Chronicles #5: Enchant

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading and leaving kudos and comments. I have been bad about replying, but I'm getting back in the game. Enjoy!

**Enchant**

It wasn’t the most revealing dress in Mena’s travel wardrobe, but it certainly wasn’t the most conservative, either. However, it was exactly the amount of skin Mena wanted to show, especially after the brush off she received from Olivia after returning from the snowy horse ride with Tom.

Mena did consider—though only for a very short millisecond—that perhaps she was being a little sensitive about Olivia’s possessiveness. After all, Mena thought, she wasn’t even supposed to be in attendance at the house. Olivia would otherwise have had Tom’s undivided attention if a strange woman weren’t around to sidetrack him. Mena knew she was probably a diversion—a puzzling mystery to focus on so he didn’t have to deal with Olivia’s increasingly insistent advances.

Still, it certainly didn’t mean she couldn’t give Olivia a run for her money. Tom clearly didn’t want Olivia’s romantic attention, and Mena had no qualms as to participating in a little underhanded competition, especially when she had a feeling she would ultimately claim victory in the end.

This was her talent, after all: enticing and hypnotizing men with her hips and breasts and flashy clothes. She played an enchantress on stage—and she did it very well. Her ability to bring men to their knees with nothing more than a look made her career more than a little lucrative. And unfortunately, no matter how much she tried to cover it up with layers of clothes and shut off her compulsion to make everyone fall in love with her, she was never successful.

Olivia had no idea what kind of fire she was playing with.

But neither did Tom, for that matter. Whatever was developing between them—a person would have to be dead not to sense his confused attraction or the mutual tension—was only on the surface level. It couldn’t go beyond light-hearted teasing about asses and perfect seats like it had earlier in the stables.

They’d only known each other for twenty-four hours, for Christ’s sake. She had a job to do elsewhere. She only planned to stay until the first possible transport back to London became available. She’d complete what was left of her tour and return home to New York. Their careers would never allow anything else than flirtation. It was ridiculous to think about getting involved.

And yet… sufficiently convincing herself to ignore her absurdly fanciful nature proved to be more than a small task.

She wanted a warm body to snuggle up to just as much as the next girl. Tom Hiddleston was more than an acceptable warm body, which worried her immensely. He had expectations. Well, at least she figured he had expectations. Even though he wasn’t his father, men always did. They wanted someone who was sexually available, but still the girl next door type—someone beautiful, but who saved it for private viewing. Not someone who took their clothes off for a living.  And  _definitely_  not someone who _enjoyed_  taking their clothes off for a living.

Tying herself down was not an option, especially when those ties always came attached to men who, though initially attracted to her act and her body, could never see themselves staying with her unless she changed her career. Or, even worse, didn’t realize she was two people—Mena herself or Mena the burlesque star—and couldn’t be just one thing for them all the time.

It was still fun to play, though.  

She needed her jollies wherever she could find them, so she definitely didn’t hesitate going Full Siren for dinner. The black dress clung close to her skin, had no back, and showed enough cleavage to accentuate her frame but to keep some respectability at what she expected to be a very formal dinner. She spent all afternoon washing and setting and curling her hair into perfection, and an hour doing her makeup before slipping into the sexiest stilettos she owned. They were silver and sparkly to compliment the plainness of her dress.

As she was perfecting the wings of her eyeliner, there was a slight rap at the door. Mena set her things down and jumped out of the bathroom for the door, opening it with some excitement. However, on the other side, was Tom’s younger sister, Emma, with a blue dress draped across her arm. Emma seemed to be bedecked and bedazzled herself, so there was no need for her to be carting another one around.

“Oh!” Emma laughed, her eyes crinkling at the corners like Tom’s. “I didn’t get a chance to see you all day… and I wanted to make sure you had something to wear to dinner tonight—but I guess you do.”

Mena smiled. “Thank you for thinking about me, Emma. I appreciate it.”

“No worries,” she replied with a shrug. “Olivia won’t know what hit her.”

“I take it you don’t like Olivia?”

Emma giggled lightly but didn’t answer directly. “Are you ready to go down? We could walk together—”

“I’m just finishing up here, I’ll meet you down there,” Mena said, looking behind her at the fake glitzy jewelry sitting on her bed.

When Mena glanced back to the door, Emma was turning to leave, but she paused and looked at Mena. “I know we know next to nothing about you, but I’m glad you’re here for a few days. It’s nice to have a new face at the proceedings.”

“At least I’ll take all of your dad’s attention so you can have peace from his critiques, right?” Mena offered.

“Picked up on that, did you?” Emma chuckled ruefully. “I love my Da, but he’s seriously uptight and the girls Tom usually brings home are wet blankets and have no… ‘strong will’…I guess, and they never stick around for long—”

“Oh, but Tom and I aren’t—”

Emma’s eyes flicked down to Mena’s body and back up, shooting her an incredulous smirk. “You aren’t dressing like that for us.”

“Really, Emma, I have no designs on him.”

Emma shrugged her shoulders. “Whether you do or not, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just glad my father has someone pushing back instead of brownnosing him.”

 _Like Olivia_.

Emma didn’t have to finish the statement, but the meaning was clear, especially after Mena remembered the way Olivia had ingratiated herself to him at dinner the previous night.

“Anyway, I better take this back,” Emma said, lifting her arm and the extra dress. “I’ll see you down there. I think I might video you coming down to dinner so I can relive the horror on Olivia’s face.”

Mena watched the woman retreat down the hallway and finally closed the door when she disappeared.  She rested her shoulder against the cool wood, thinking about the night ahead of her. It was bound to be interesting, but she couldn’t wait.

********

Emma was being odd. Okay, odd _er_  than usual. And that was saying a lot for his little sister, who was probably the most awkward human being in the world—more than he had ever been.

They were congregating in the formal drawing room for before-dinner drinks, and every time the door opened to admit someone else, she pulled her mobile out and pointed it at Olivia.  Fortunately for Emma, Olivia didn’t notice the attention, especially since she had taken up residence in front of him, talking his ear off about some fabulous trip to the Turks and Caicos she planned for the New Year. But he saw it, standing as he was trapped in a corner with Olivia blocking his exit. Emma merely shrugged her shoulder when he shot her a narrow-eyed frown, as though she would understand the universal nonverbal expression for “What the fuck are you doing?”

Tom sipped his gin and tonic, wishing it were stronger, and checked the large grandfather clock across the room. He was sure he’d told Mena to be downstairs by 7:30. It was7:33 and he wanted to find her, even if he was only using it as an excuse to get away from his constant female shadow and his strange sister.

He was beginning to excuse himself and extract his bollocks from Olivia’s clutches when Rajan, his elder sister’s husband, slipped into the spot beside him, placing a friendly arm on his shoulder.  It did the trick. Well, part of the trick. Olivia wandered off to her mother and brother, but it did not aid him in finding Mena.

“How are you doing, old friend?” Rajan asked with a knowing grin.

“Thanks,” Tom said.

Rajan chuckled. “Anything for my favorite brother-in-law.”

“I’m your only brother-in-law.”

“Exactly.”

Tom rolled his eyes in friendly exasperation. “You haven’t seen Mena have you—when you and Sarah and the kids came in?”

“No, not yet,” Rajan replied. “I was trying to herd Kiran, though, so who knows. Herding Kiran is like herding cats. She could have been wandering around and I missed her.”

Tom glanced at his wild nephew, who was playing with a wooden toy train across the room with his younger sister. His father was with them and smiling for a change.

“You like this girl, don’t you?” he heard Rajan ask, though it took a few seconds for the words to make sense.

Tom shook his head forcefully. “No, not at all. I’m just trying to make the stay a little more bearable for her—especially after the way Da treated her last night.”

Rajan laughed. “Yeah, I’ve heard a similar tune from you before.”

“You have not.”

“I have,” Rajan said. “ ‘No, Raj, I don’t care of her. She’s just in my path. But she’s all I think about. And all I talk about. And I’m concerned about where she is every waking moment of the day.’ ”

Tom stood aghast. “ _Never_  have I sounded that.”

“You totally have.”

Tom shook his head.

Rajan grinned. “I mean, I’m not faulting you. She seems cute if you like the bohemian thing she has going. And she’s got a lively personality.”

“She’s just a new friend I’m helping out,” Tom said. “That’s all.”

But he knew it was a lie. Despite not knowing her, and trying to convince himself he was still only doing this because it was the ‘right thing to do’, it had quickly changed for him. He was enchanted by her.   _All_ of her, whether she looked like a bag lady wearing flashy lingerie or a jazz club singer… also wearing flashy lingerie.

“Oh, Mena! Don’t you look lovely!”

Tom hadn’t heard the door open in the noise of the room, but quickly spun on his feet when he heard his mother’s exclamation. He noticed, first, that Emma was standing behind her mobile with a gleeful smile on her face and a cackle in her throat. Her camera was presumably pointed in Olivia’s direction. Secondly, he saw Olivia’s unbridled ire burning a hole into Mena’s forehead.

Lastly, he focused on the vision standing in the doorway, back straight, chin and nose proud, long, tanned and toned legs protruding from a knee-length dress that hugged her perfect hourglass.  Her breasts were amazing and bounteous, though having been an admirer of that particular female anatomy for some time, he knew they couldn’t be natural. It didn’t matter to him, except for the fact that it was shock that she was hiding all that—all leg and breast and athletic form beneath so much clothing—from the world.

But, he remembered, this was a costume for her. She wore the other stuff because that was  _her_ ; this wasn’t  _her_  in the same way the grunge was. This was her best look, her costume for her performances, and he could understand why she didn’t always want to look like that all the time. It would begin to make someone feel contrived or fake if they were wearing their costumes day in and day out.

A body beside Tom drifted closer, forcing him to blink and glance to his side. Rajan was there with a smile. “Yeah, just helping her out.”

“Shut it, Raj,” Tom snapped under his breath. He glanced back at Mena, who shot him a brilliant grin, the deadly crimson of her lipstick highlighting a dazzling smile.  She gracefully and daintilly pushed a bit of curled black hair from her forehead and allowed Sarah to pull her to the side to introduce the children.

He watched Mena’s arse as she floated across the room on spindly heels, admiring the way her calf muscles flexed under skin soft skin his fingers itched to touch—just to see if they really were as soft as they looked. He’d never considered calves to be particularly sexy, but by God, they were on her.

He was done for. Absolutely done for.

Mena giggled while Kiran and Lizzie showed her their toys, but pressed her lips together when she spied the critical grandfather staring at her. His father was inscrutable at the best of times, and he wasn’t giving anything away now, except for the very slight hint—a glint, nothing more—in his blue eyes that he was appreciative of Mena’s presentation more than he had been the night before.

But that still wasn’t saying much.

Mena quickly excused herself, said hello to the others in the room, making sure to stop and acknowledge Olivia. Olivia turned red and said nothing, offering only a grunt.

Mena finally stopped in front of him and held her hands out to her side, for a full view of her body again—as though he hadn’t been transfixed with it since she’d walked into the room.

“So? Do you believe me now?”

Tom started to say something, but somehow the words tied around his tongue and he fumbled.  In an effort to hide his faux pas, he coughed into his hand.  Then he smiled and spoke slowly, regaining his male confidence. “You are a vision.”

Mena giggled and leaned in to him, placing a hand on top of his shoulder, but slipping it to his back as she moved in closer. Her warm breath whispered against his ear. “In case you were still wondering what I’m hiding beneath my clothes, I’m wearing black knickers this evening. Sheer and soft. A little ruffle on the waist. They’re very cute. No bra, though, not in this dress.”

He turned sharply, not realizing she had stayed so close, and nearly met her lips. Instead he halted, eyeing her dark eyes and reining himself in until he controlled his urges. She smelled of soft floral and musk. Something exotic, he thought, but heady and wonderful.  He swallowed around the lump in his throat and smiled at her, again struggling to regain his footing. He wasn’t used to feeling like this, and he definitely wasn’t used to such illicit conversation in the middle of a room filled with his family. But he couldn’t help himself.

“How will I ever know if you’re telling me the truth if I can’t verify it with my own eyes?” he murmured.

Her eyes sparkled with her tinkling laughter. “I told you all you had to do was ask to see it.”

Tom lifted his brows in question, but didn’t voice the words. He  _couldn’t_ have voiced the words if he wanted to, anyway, as his father was quickly standing up and ushering people into dinner. Tom figured it was probably better that he hadn’t asked to see. He didn’t need that complication. Not now, not ever.

As he escorted her into dinner, her delicate hand holding the inside crook of his arm, and then as they separated to their spots on opposite ends of the long banquet table, he wondered what happened back in that drawing room. For a brief moment, he’d forgotten about everything. About everyone. A strange tug pulled at his chest, just like the night before as they said goodnight to each other in front of the fire. It was bizarre and it was exhilarating. Enchanting.

Quite frankly, he couldn’t liken it any other experience in his many years of life. But that was the true mystery, after all. The mystery of Mena—how she’d ended up in his life and how he suddenly never wanted her to leave it.


End file.
